Power and Interdependence in Work Groups

The dynamics and consequences of power may depend upon whether high- and low-power people believe they have largely cooperative or competitive goals. Managers and their employees from 47 groups within a large company rated each other's power and the extent to which they had developed cooperation, competition, and independence. Cooperation and power were both related to perceived effectiveness of manager and employee. The positive correlations between cooperation and power contradict the common, implicit assumption that power occurs in competition. Results suggest that experimental findings generalize to ongoing relationships in organizations and indicate that cooperative goals are critical for constructive power management.